Night Sessions is based primarily on David S. Chos life experiences as a Chicago-born and raised child of Korean immigrants to America in the early 1970s

The collection presents snapshots of the Korean American experience through poems ranging from the hardships of first generation Korean immigrants, their blue-collar work (though many had professional degrees), and arduous immigration to the United States to the rise of the second and even third generation, of culturally Americanized youth attempting to reconcile their bi-cultural heritage.

“Well-crafted poems of quiet narratives that reveal a subtle first person persona whose strength is manyfold. Cho makes magic of the mundane. Cho’s art is large though quiet with images that linger on affection, sensibility, and taste.”—Mona Lisa Saloy

From the Book:

Father

It is not rain that makes
my father sing a loud
song. I hear a narrow
sound, the thresh of his

sickle, its staccato
making music with his voice.
It draws me near. He calls
this dark marsh field

heaven, the rice to fall,
snow. My father
takes the white
of his palm and lays it

gently on my face.
Two full counts
of callused tenderness,
my eyes sleeping

with the wind. Father says
I am his rice seed,
sprouted to a stalk. The
silence of the field

my only reply. He goes back
to his work, back to make
music, the wooden handle making
his hands hard. He,

the only worker. He
the one worker in this pond.
He in his heaven,
in this field, in his music.

DAVID S. CHO, born and raised in Chicago, author of the chapbook, Song of Our Songs, currently teaches at Hope College.